The BBC is right for once – the BNP cannot be banned from the airwaves

It’s not often I get the chance to say this, so here goes. The BBC is absolutely right. No one can seriously disagree with a word of Mark Thompson’s apologia in today’s Guardian, in which he explains the Corporation’s decision to allow a BNP politician on Question Time.

Oceans of ink have been spilt on this issue by columnists who fall into three broad camps: those who say “We shouldn’t accord the BNP any respectability when they refuse to accord full dignity to all our citizens”; those who say “The best way to defeat the BNP is to expose them to calm, rational arguments”; and those who say “The BNP exist because the other parties seem remote and self-serving”.

All three propositions can be reasonably advanced; all three are irrelevant. This isn’t about the BNP. It’s about the BBC’s duty of impartiality. As the Director-General argues: “It is a straightforward matter of fact that, with some 6% of the vote and the election of two MEPs in this spring's European elections – and with some success in local elections as well – the BNP has demonstrated a level of support that would normally lead to an occasional invitation to join the panel on Question Time.”

Think, those of you who demand a ban, what you are asking for. You want the BBC to over-rule the electorate. And on the basis of what? What would be the BBC's mandate to make qualitative judgments of this kind?

On occasion, the Beeb has indeed allowed its partiality (unconscious partiality, to be sure, but partiality none the less) to override its obligation to treat all parties evenly. At the recent Norwich North by-election, for example, it gave the Greens equal status with the big three, while ignoring the U K Independence Party, which had done far better in recent elections and which, despite the BBC’s best efforts, handsomely beat the Greens on the day. The BBC attracted widespread criticism on that occasion, including from this blog; so it is only fair to praise the Corporation now.

If only the other parties would stop swooning like Victorian matrons at the very mention of the BNP, that party would lose its chief electoral asset, namely the belief that a vote for radical socialism is the best way to signal your contempt for the entire political class. Let the BNP stand on the basis of its hate-filled, atavistic, far-Left platform (yes, far-Left: see here), and the party will soon drop back to the two per cent that represents its real level of support.

This will require some Labour types to stop using the BNP as a device to flaunt their anti-fascist credentials ("See how nice I am? I hate those evil racists even more than he does! He wants them banned from the BBC? I want them banned from contesting elections!" etc) Chaps, we believe you. You really don't have to keep repeating yourselves. Believe me: in the current climate, it's doing more harm than good.